Belle Riley Thompson
Internship placement: Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies at Carleton University
Personal Statement
Belle hails from Winnipeg, Manitoba but loves to call our nation’s capital her home. In her second year in the Bachelor of Journalism and Humanities at Carleton, Belle enjoys writing, listening to new music and colour coding her weekly planner. Belle has spent the last nine summers at Camp Massad Manitoba, a Hebrew Immersion camp specializing in creative arts. Belle is a senior intern, working for the second year in a row with the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Education on campus. At the ZC, Belle assists with various administrative and communication duties. This year, she is looking forward to working closely with the other interns to hopefully make a meaningful impact on Ottawa’s Jewish community.
Blog #2
March 10, 2019
As the academic year draws to a close, it is time to reflect on all we have accomplished this year in DFL. This year, I felt our group was very strong; all nine of us brought a different set of skills to DFL and were able to learn different things from one another. From our first seminar, we were comfortably sharing ideas and suggestions for how to make this year meaningful for all of us, and the surrounding Jewish community. We were able to collaborate on our ideas and make the most of our DFL experience.
Once again, I could not be happier with my placement at the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Education at Carleton. I work closely with my superiors in this placement, albeit in an independent manner. I am entrusted with a variety of different tasks from working directly with professor Butler’s students to administrative organization for the Zelikovitz Centre.
In November, I attended a presentation hosted by the Zelikovitz Centre which welcomed Dr. Helmut Walser Smith, Martha Rivers Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Walser Smith spoke about the November Pogrom of 1938, the Night of Broken Glass and how this event became part of the collective memory of Germans in the Federal Republic in the postwar years.
This talk is just one of the many educationally enriching experiences the Zelikovitz Centre has afforded me. Dr. Walser Smith critically examined the notion of memory and how this is no longer the right vocabulary to use. As the 18-year old’s of the war, now well into their 90s undoubtedly have gaps in their memories and how they remember. Historians are also grappling with the challenge of how to properly remember the Pogrom when clearly it was not the worst disaster of the time, the genocide was.
This event perfectly encapsulated my degree program and area of study, as a student double majoring in Journalism and Humanities, I am constantly having to draw upon and critically examining the past in order to inform me of the present.
This year I learned that leadership is a collaborative endeavour. Interns are able to hopefully make a difference in their placements because of our willingness to learn from others and take constructive criticism. For our fundraiser this year, we were excited to target a different audience, (students) and test our creativity in putting on a different styled event than DFL had in the past. While we may not have raised as much money as we would have liked to for our chosen charity Tamir, we were able to take away valuable learning opportunities for how we can improve in similar undertakings for next time.
I have truly valued my time these past two years in DFL and look forward to continuing my work with the Zelikovitz Centre for the remainder of my undergraduate degree.
Blog #1
November 14, 2018
I am very excited for my upcoming year with the Developing Future Leaders program. Coming back as a senior intern, I am once again working with the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies on Carleton’s campus. I am a second-year student in the combined Honours degree program of Journalism and Humanities at Carleton and have a passion for Jewish culture, lgbtq rights and writing about prevalent social issues. The nature of my internship is unique and versatile, I get the opportunity to engage with people of all ages and have administrative responsibilities that require me to work directly with students.
Last year, the centre’s main event was that of the Israel Travel course. The Israel Travel course is a bi-annual course that combines education and travel in the richly historical country of Israel. We had over 20 people participate, and it was a great success! The trip was hard work, putting everything together with such a small team, but I learned a lot. I look forward to the Israel Travel Course in 2020 when I can apply my seasoned knowledge and be fully aware of the tasks at hand to create another successful trip for enthusiastic students.
Along with the Israel Travel course, the Zelikovitz Centre also hosted an event with keynote speaker Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella. Justice Abella spoke on the notions of equality and identity, herself being the first Jewish woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. For me, this event was incredibly powerful as I am strongly interested in the field of Human Rights and its concurrency with the law. In the future, as the Zelikovitz Centre hosts more of these events, I hope to encourage more students to come participate and mingle with the older generations; making connections is an important part of the university experience.
As the Zelikovitz Centre is an integral sponsor of the Developing Future Leaders program, I get the chance to work directly with all of the DFL students, communicating with them regularly and making sure everything food related is prepared for our seminars, this is a very important step! I feel my work contributes positively to the work of the other interns as the Zelikovitz Centre strives to be an inclusive and collaborative partner in the Ottawa Jewish Community.
This year, I am especially looking forward to the fundraising event all of the interns work on together. It is a great opportunity to develop cohesion, comradery and challenge our creativity! I think that with the knowledge and experience I gained from last year, we can put on a really great fundraiser for a cause we are all passionate about.
Our big event this year so far has been the Holocaust Museum Pop Up at the Temple Israel Synagogue. We had such an outpour of support from the local Jewish community for the beginning of Holocaust education month, it was incredible to see their positive reactions.
At the Zelikovitz Centre this year, I think we will be putting on more events and engaging with the community even more than last year as we will not be busy planning the travel course. I am excited for a change in pace and new focuses this academic year.